My trip to India
I’ve always wanted to see the real India and the opportunity came when my son-in-law said he was going on a 22 day trip in October. I immediately agreed to meet up with him in Delhi. Here’s what we did for a total cost of R70 000 including food, accomodation, airport transfers and travel from George in the Western Cape to Johannesburg, Dubai, Delhi and back:
There were 17 of us in the group and we had a full time guide from Intrepid Travel. We had to buy our own food and used mostly public transport.
Here’s a short take on what to expect:
- Insane traffic. Tuc tucs, scooters, motorbikes, pedestrians, cows and dogs fill the steets and go every which way amid heaps of rubbish. Plus a cacophony of hooters. It is nothing to have a tuc tuc weaving through oncoming traffic on your side of the road, or a scooter taking a short cut at a traffic circle, not going clockwise round to take a right, but simply taking an anti-clockwise shortcut, again through oncoming traffic. There’s only one rule of the road. Don’t bump.
- Pot holes. As good as Johannesburg’s.
- Polution. I’m used to an Air Quality Index score of 0 to 10 in Knysna. Johanneburg is bad at 40 to 70. Delhi was over 900!
- Food. Excellent and cheap. I stuck mostly to vegetarian simply because it was the best. I bought one bottle of wine and it was terrible. The beer was great as were the teas.
- Hotels. OK once you realised that one of the “light” switches turned on the hot water. You simply had to figure out which by a process of elimination.
- ATMs. Most of them work fine. Don’t take a Schyft card. They don’t work. Draw cash with your credit card.
- Buildings. Once you’ve seen one fort, you’ve seen them all. The one absolute highlight was the Taj Mahal. The famous shot of it from the front does nothing to capture the incredible beauty of all the buildings. They are breathtaking.
- Heat. October is just after the monsoons. Even so, the 35 degrees seemed incredibly hot especially as we did a fair amount of walking. In mid summer Delhi can reach 45 degrees. Not for the feint hearted!
- What to wear. I took lots of gym pants and tee shirts. Waste of space! In Delhi I bought a thin long shirt with open sleeves and thin baggy pants. Every evening, I washed them through and by next morning they were dry, so I was able to wear them every day.
- And on my last day, back in Delhi, I had a haircut for R40 and a fantastic 90 minute massage for about R900.
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The water price was the kiosk price on the beach, on a hot day, back in 2006. So locally it was a sellers market!
It would probably have been less expensive in a bar or restaurant and was way more than a case of water bottles in a grocery store. Of course in the back of a car, the water got warm so the family hated the idea & also detested the stock of cereal bars I bought.
The cellar data market is dynamic & continues to develop. What you did was probably pretty cost effective and hassle free. When you are on holiday your time is valuable and avoiding stress is beyond price! Try buying a SIM card in Buenos Aires, getting it registered/ activated and then buying data!
I’ve 2021-2023 I was spending 6 months per year overseas in multiple countries, so I’ve had to be flexible.
Thumbs up!
I once paid $5 for 500 ml water on a beach in Miami.
After that we traveled with a case of water in the car.
Getting a local SIM for data is the 4th challenge. Vodacom now offer a data roaming package that is reasonably priced for short trips. I’ve used it for the first week on arrival in a new country.
I use a Google Fi eSIM for reasonably priced international calls (infrequently used).
I’ve not yet tried one of the global roaming eSIMs (so far local has been lower cost) and most local prepaid data packages require a physical SIM.
Primary need for local data – Google Maps & Google Translate.
Hi Dave,
Was that the actual going price or was it a sting? The going price for 650mL in Delhi is about R8.
Before leaving SA, I installed an electronic SIM, data only (we each bought 20G because of videos, but didn’t use more than about 8). On landing in Delhi, the switch over to the dual SIM was instant and I was immediately calling my son-in-law who was already at the hotel. We used the data for Google maps and Whatapp to communicate with the other members of the group, plus video calls home and sending numerous videos of the trip. I made the home calls from hotel rooms where there was always free WiFi. To my mind that’s the way to go.
I was caught by the “light switch” that controls the geyser last year in Belgrade. Took me a day or two to figure it out.
I maintain these are the big challenges of a new city.
1) how to use the public transport system.
2) how to pay for the public transport
3) how to operate the controls of the shower.
Hi David,
I guess you’ve switched to electronic SIM, which sorts out the communication problem easily.
The other challenge is how to avoid being skinned as a tourist. I haven’t travelled for years and after some 30 hours total travel time from Knysna to Delhi, I was tired as hell and desperate for water. I stupidly asked the kiosk in the airport whether they took dollars. They charged me 10$ for a 650 mL bottle of water! In my head that was like R10. It was only afterwards that I did the maths.
What and adventure, Derek. One has to see and feel and hear, and most importantly, smell India for yourself to believe it. My two trips to the heart of rural India (via Mumbai and Hyderabad) was like leaving planet Earth. It completely recalibrated my concept of chaos. But I’d be back there at the drop of hat if I could.
Hi Fred,
You hit it right on!